that was obama's opening bid. the republicans were miffed at him, they knew he wouldn't give them exactly what they'd accept. a few said they were inch superintendented like that. again you don't want to negotiate with yourself, you want to start over here and get in the middle to set up some type of deal. don't expect any deal until christmas at the earliest. >> reporter: let's go back to the tax cuts you're talking about. president obama wants to raise revenue by taxing those making $250,000 or more a year. it rises from 33% and 35% today to 36% and 39.6%, i believe. but that would only generate about 85 billion a year. according to the treasury department, the federal government spends that amount every eight 1/2 days. do you think that the point is purely political for the president since that's what he campaigned on? >> that is what speaker john boehner said, is that washington has a spending problem, not a tax problem. but speaker john boehner has a political problem in that their party's guy lost the electi